A Faded Legacy

Dave Hall spent many years researching the life of Amy Brown Lyman, which forged the production of his life’s work, this biography of Lyman’s life, family, social work, and leadership in the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). This long-awaited publication does not disappoint, and Hall was awarded with the Mormon History Association’s Best First Book Award at its 2016 conference. Hall’s main argument is this: as Mormonism transitioned out of polygamous practice in the 1890s and won woman suffrage with Utah’s statehood in 1896, a younger generation of Mormon female leadership needed a new outlet for their reform impulses. Lyman, first as member of the general Relief Society board, beginning in 1909 and later as eighth general Relief Society president from 1940 to 1945, almost single handedly drove the organization to transfer its energies to the new field of social work. Lyman’s creation of the Relief Society Social Service Department in 1919 gave the organization a new focus and Lyman a place to pour her energy, passion, and training of over four-thousand Mormon women in some aspect of social work. Her career came to a halt when her husband, LDS Church apostle Richard Lyman, was excommunicated for his extramarital affair in 1943, leaving Amy feeling publicly embarrassed and pressured to resign her own presidency in 1945. This “devastating tragedy” only “undermined her legacy” (p. 3), and she became almost forgotten to younger generations of Mormons.

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